With the track and field events of the Olympic Games well underway, I went down to Loughborough University’s School of Sports and Sciences (Team GB’s preparation base) to learn more about the biomechanics behind Olympic success.Continue reading →

IF only moaning was an Olympic sport, Team GB would be odds-on favourites to top the medal table this summer.

Think about it. We would destroy the competition in the synchronised whingeing and no one would come close to us in the high grump. There’d even be a dedicated stadium for it all. It’d probably be built in Sunderland.

Because, while many of us are eagerly anticipating the thrill of the Olympic Games and can’t wait to see Tom Daley break out his Speedos, Usain Bolt break the sound barrier and Paula Radcliffe, inevitably, breakdown in tears, there is a miserable minority out there who seem determined not to join the party.Continue reading →

With so called ‘mutually beneficial’ dating sites growing in popularity in the UK, it seems that many of our young women really do have a price. Former sugar daddy David Montrose tells me about the young women in his life with whom, to him, love was strictly business.

How would you feel if your young daughter told you she was involved with a wealthy and much older man, who lavishes her with gifts and takes her on exotic nights out – and was paying her to do so?

For the former New York stockbroker – now in his forties – paying young women for the privilege of wining, dining and enjoying other benefits with them was never something he deliberately set out to do.

So, Fernando Alonso has joined Twitter. First of all, trust me when I say that I’m genuinely happy and excited for all the Ferrari and Alonso fans I know. This is something that’s been way overdue and after seeing Kobayashi-san join Twitter earlier this year, I can appreciate how exciting it is to see your hero become a part of the amazing worldwide community that Twitter has become. However, with that said, I have to be honest with you all. I’m not exactly thrilled about the prospect of Alonsomania running wild on my timeline over the coming season. In fact, I’m really not looking forward to it at all. Continue reading →

‘Schadenfreude’ is a horrible word, when you think about it. Not only do you feel like a pretentious knob when you try to use it in a sentence and offend roughly 90 million people across the channel when you inevitably botch how it’s supposed to be pronounced, when you think about what it means – ‘pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune’ – it’s really not something you should enjoy half as much as you undoubtedly do when you feel it.

Remember kids, all REAL man are feminists too.

It’s without the slightest, faintest trace of guilt, however, that I admit the word ‘schadenfreude’ perfectly described my reaction to learning of the catastrophic meltdown(warning, there’s some pretty offensive stuff on there) of popular YouTube user and early front-runner for Twat of the Year, ‘TheAmazingAtheist’, earlier this week. While telling a rape victim that the man who took so much from her when he committed the sickening act deserves a medal for doing so is pretty bloody offensive to say the least, I also couldn’t say that it was the first time this obnoxious, arrogant piss-bag had offended me. Continue reading →

As the ‘Baldy Blogger’, Adrian Sudbury campaigned to raise awareness of stem cell donation with both the public and Westminster. Following his death from Leukaemia at just 25, his father Keith now continues his son’s work. I spoke to him in November to hear his story.

“This picture is difficult for my wife and me,” says 61 year-old Keith Sudbury as an image of his late son, just days from death, appears on the laptop beside him.

It shows Adrian – or ‘Sudders’ to his friends – on the phone with then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown, learning that his bid to win government support for his stem cell awareness campaign had been successful.

(This was something I wrote back in October for the Nottingham Playhouse Theatre, who helped me arrange the interview. It’s about theatre, so most some of you may not find it particularly interesting!)

For many writers whose words are brought to life on the stage, satire has always been a powerful tool through which to challenge the establishment and question the many faces of human nature.
And with the world still reeling from the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui will take on, perhaps, even greater significance as an example of truly outstanding theatre.

For acclaimed British writer Stephen Sharkey – who has skilfully adapted Brecht’s original German script for this production – this gripping tale of a crime lord’s rise to power in depression stricken Chicago has one of the most powerful narratives he has ever read.